Some LGBTQ Jews expressed opposition to the New York City Dyke March’s recently released anti-Zionist policy, which they are interpreting as no Jews being allowed to participate. The policy, released on social media, states that the march is committed to “anti-Zionist, anti-racist, pro-LGBTQ+ community standards,” though further guidance is not stated.
The New York City Dyke March’s website states that any person who identifies as a dyke is welcome to participate.
But some queer Jews take the march’s recently released policy goals to be an effective ban on Jewish participation, considering widespread Jewish support for the State of Israel.
Rabbi Denise L. Eger, a queer woman who is the interim executive director of A Wider Bridge, a national nonprofit based in New York City that seeks to link the American and Israeli LGBTQ communities, used to lead a synagogue in West Hollywood. She said that’s given her a front-row seat to antisemitic narratives in the LGBTQ community.
“What they are doing in the New York Dyke March is racist and heinous, and it goes against all the principles feminism is really about,” Eger told the Bay Area Reporter.
Eger said antisemitism had been rising since before the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks, citing the 2017 Charlottesville, Virginia march when white supremacists chanted “Jews will not replace us.”
“We’ve seen this,” she said. “This isn’t unusual in the sense that antisemites have come out of the woodwork. We saw this in the past after the Trump regime won with people in Charlottesville that was antisemitism on the right, but this is antisemitism on the left.”
The Anti-Defamation League agrees.
“Banning Zionists from an LGBTQ+ march is beyond shameful. The majority of Jews consider Zionism to be an integral part of their Jewish identity, so organizers of this event are forcing many who identify both as Jewish and LGBTQ+ to not only hide, but also flat out denounce a part of themselves,” the ADL stated. “Newsflash: You cannot exclude the majority of Jews and call yourself inclusive.”
For its part, the NYC Dyke March’s website stated that, “Any person who identifies as a dyke is welcome to march regardless of gender expression or identity, sex assigned at birth, sexual orientation, race, age, political affiliation, religious identity, ability, class, or immigration status.”
The march committee didn’t return multiple requests for comment.
The policy is in a statement on the march’s Instagram page made March 14.
“A number of former Dyke March Committee members reached out to express their desire for the Committee to take stronger stances on several issues, including an explicitly anti-Zionist position,” the statement reads. It added that due to changes on the committee since January, it is prepared to do so.
The committee stated it is shifting its goals to reestablishing the Dyke March Committee as a political organization for the dyke community, designing the march to be accessible to dykes with disabilities, addressing masking policies, and “strengthening our commitment to anti-Zionist, anti-racist, pro-LGBTQ+ community standards,” the post states.
The march is scheduled for Saturday, June 28, where it will kick off at Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan at 5 p.m. New York’s was the first Dyke March, founded in 1993, and is one of the world’s largest.
Yuval David, a gay American Israeli actor, told the B.A.R., “When people use the word anti-Zionist, it’s a mask for saying anti-Jewish. … Why would you be against the rights of people?”
Eger and David said this isn’t the first time a dyke march has been involved in this controversy, mentioning a 2017 incident at the Chicago Dyke March, when a woman with a Pride flag featuring star of David – the symbol of the Jewish people, which is also on the flag of Israel – was asked to leave.
David, who lives in New York City, feels the Dyke March’s position is not tenable. He cited statistics that large majorities of American Jews support Zionism, which is the establishment of a Jewish state in the historic birthplace of Judaism. (A 2024 survey from the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area found 89% of Bay Area Jews support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state, for example.)
David’s argument was that belief in the Jewish people’s connection to the land of Israel is core to their ethnoreligious beliefs, which means that a ban on Zionism equates to a ban on how a majority of Jews understand their personal identities. He called it “verbal camouflage to discriminate against Jews.”
“Our Shabbat prayers, each Friday in synagogue, there are even prayers about it raining on the land and prayers about us being able to go back to our homeland, and now that Israel has been created a state since 1948, those prayers were reworded because now we have our homeland, and no we need to protect our homeland and its neighbors,” he said. “The Dyke March publicly displays and expresses its anti-Zionist, anti-Israel, and anti-Jewish discrimination.”
David also finds it hypocritical that an LGBTQ group would stand against the world’s only Jewish state, considering that the Jewish people have, like queer people, been persecuted and denied their rights for two millennia. The Jewish people lacked self-determination in Palestine from the Roman invasion in 64 BC, and especially after the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, until Israeli independence in 1948.
“We’ve been lynched, tortured, imprisoned, persecuted and killed, so I would expect our U.S.-based LGBTQ movement to actually support LGBTQ people in need, and not take a stance against an entire nation,” David said. “What other nation is the Dyke March taking a stand against?”
SF Dyke March still in discussions
Not everyone agrees with that assessment. Carla Schick, a Jewish queer and nonbinary person, is part of the Bay Area group Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism! She said she’s “tired of them weaponizing antisemitism” to support the Israel-Hamas war, or Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which is internationally recognized as Palestinian territory.
The other Palestinian territory is the Gaza Strip, where Israel has been fighting Hamas since October 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists invaded Israeli land and killed 1,195 people, then took hundreds hostage. There are 59 hostages still in captivity, the Associated Press reports.
Schick doesn’t agree that “anti-Zionism” is antisemitic.
“As a Jew and as a queer person, how can I sit by and watch this happening when I was told nobody stood up for the Jews in Germany?” she asked.
Schick said, “Right now the main point is that there is both a genocide going on in Gaza now and forced removal, which could lead to a genocide, in the West Bank. This is an ongoing issue in the West Bank. … That should be the main focus.”
The San Francisco Dyke March, which is in the process of resurrecting with new leadership, is set for the same day as its Big Apple sibling.
Crystal Mason, interim president of the organizing committee for the San Francisco march, told the B.A.R., that the group has not made a decision on whether to have a similar policy.
“I don’t want to say too much because we are in the process of trying to figure out our values – but it is an issue, continues to be an issue, as it should be, and we are not trying to shut down any discussion," Mason said.
Mason added that, “We are against genocide anywhere and everywhere, and we understand the genocide in Palestine is not the only one going on at the moment.”
Schick said that while the San Francisco Dyke March has not taken a position on Zionism, “The Dyke March has historically been a liberation march. It was a countermarch to Pride,” and that being against Zionism is another way people can express opposition to narratives in the dominant culture.
South Africa brought a case in late 2023 before the International Court of Justice alleging that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. A final ruling has not been handed down.
David argued that being opposed to the Israeli government doesn’t mean being opposed to the Jewish nation.
“There are many laws and rulings passed in the U.S. that I am completely against, but it does not make me anti-America,” he said. “It’s the same thing in Israel.”
LGBTQ Agenda is an online column that appears weekly. Got a tip on queer news? Contact John Ferrannini at [email protected]
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